What parents and schools need to know about AI-generated child sexual abuse material — why it is illegal, how to report it safely, and how to protect children.
AI image tools can now generate realistic sexual images of children who do not exist, or place a real child's face onto sexual material. In UK law this is child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and is illegal to create, possess, or share, whether or not a real child was photographed. The Internet Watch Foundation has reported a sharp rise in AI-generated CSAM, and it is a major focus of the Online Safety Act's duties on platforms.
Offenders use image-generation apps, sometimes 'nudifying' tools, or models fine-tuned on abuse material to produce illegal imagery. A real child can be targeted when their ordinary photos — for example from a school website or a public social media account — are used to generate sexual images of them. This is why oversharing children's images publicly carries a risk, and why any request for a child's photos should be treated seriously.
1. Set your child's social accounts to private
Switch your child's profiles to private and review who can see their photos. Publicly available, perfectly ordinary face photos are the raw material offenders and 'nudify' apps use — making them private is the single quickest thing you can do to reduce the risk.
2. Talk about photo requests and fakes
Tell your child that no one online should ask for photos of them, that it's always fine to say no and tell you, and that if anyone ever makes or shares a fake image of them it is not their fault and they must come straight to you. Naming it now makes it sayable later.
3. Save the reporting routes before you need them
Bookmark the Internet Watch Foundation and CEOP reporting links, and the Report Remove service. If you ever encounter this material, do not save, share, or screenshot it — report the web address to the IWF, who work internationally to have it removed.
ตรวจสอบล่าสุด: 2026-07-02
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